Rebirth of the 8th-Circle Mage

Chapter 324: The New God (3)

Ping—! Boom!

The brief sound of embers going off was followed by a much louder one.

Henry had heard this sound before in the magic tournaments that used to be held in the Magical Spire.

The massive collision of condensed energy led to a massive explosion, producing a deafening boom which was followed by an aftershock, murderous shards of light shooting out in all directions.

However, there wasn’t just one explosion.

An overwhelming amount of spears were still clashing, and the previous explosion had acted as a flare, setting off a chain reaction.

Through the flashes of light, Henry saw Arthus staring at the hail of spears in disbelief. He was speechless, which put a smile on Henry’s face.

The explosions occurred for a simple reason—every time Arthus increased the amount of divine power in the Dark Spears, Henry did the same with his spears.

However, Arthus didn’t notice this at all, or rather, he couldn’t possibly notice. No matter how much divine power Arthus possessed, he was still human, so he couldn’t see Henry’s divine power, since Henry had now become a god.

For that reason, Henry could match the divine power in the Dark Spears. Fortunately, Arthus had been infusing his divine power slowly enough for Henry to just manage to keep up.

When Arthus finally raised the divine power in his spears to thirty percent, Henry decided that it was time to make a move. They couldn’t just continue playing this game of chicken by endlessly empowering their spears.

Thus, when Arthus’ Dark Spears reached thirty percent divine power, Henry picked up the pace and increased the divine power in his spears to thirty-one percent.

That slim difference in power allowed Henry to devour Arthus’ spears.

“W-what the hell…?!”

Only when shards of light shot out in all directions like meteors did Arthus realize the severity of the situation.

The spears had hitherto been indestructible, no matter how much divine power Arthus poured into them, but they suddenly exploded one by one.

However, Arthus noticed that the explosion itself had a golden hue, not a dark one like his spears, which meant that it wasn’t Henry’s spears being destroyed, but his!

Arthus’ pupils were visibly trembling.

Henry smirked even wider, and seeing his reaction, Arthus felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

‘Y-you fucking bastard!’

Up to this point, Arthus had slowly strengthened his Dark Spears as though he were maintaining a campfire, but panic spurred him to increase the rate at which he infused divine power into the spears.

He didn’t know what Henry was doing, but he wasn’t just going to let things go his way.

Arthus’ divine power burned fiercely akin to a huge pile of firewood. His spears had only been growing in size, their shape stable, but now they flickered and burned like flames due to the sudden and great increase in divine power.

Seeing this, Henry clenched his stretched-out hand and closed his eyes halfway, making his vision blurry. He did that so he could concentrate on the growing divine power within him, feeling a bit pressed by time.

Henry realized that he still didn’t possess enough divine power. Mathematically speaking, Henry had passed the forty percent threshold, whereas Arthus stood at 49.9 percent divine power.

Thus, the gap between them was roughly ten percent. Even so, Henry unsheathed his sword and said firmly, “That’s not too bad.”

Even if Arthus was ahead of him by ten percent, Henry had caught up to forty percent in a matter of minutes.

Given that he had just been on the brink of despair in a pool of his own blood, this was a dramatic improvement.

As Henry summoned the Colt Sword, he radiated a golden glow, which was different from the emerald light caused by his mana.

After drawing his sword with a trail of golden light, Henry stomped his foot on the ground.

Thud! Whoosh—!

Then, a familiar mana armor swirled around Henry and enveloped him with the same golden glow as the Colt Sword.

‘It’s not just the color that changed. This definitely feels different!’

Henry had never felt his mana to be cold or warm, as mana didn’t have a temperature. However, he now definitely felt a pleasant warmth from the golden light that enveloped him entirely.

The reason Henry’s divine power felt so warm and pleasant was probably the fact that everyone believed in him and desperately prayed for him to win.

Seeing Henry’s golden radiance, Arthus finally realized that Henry had acquired a new kind of divine power, one he hadn’t seen before. He was certain it couldn’t be from those rings.

‘Just how?!’

Arthus was shocked, as though realizing that the hound that had bit him actually had rabies. This kind of shock nearly made him jump out of his own skin.

In response, Arthus infused even more divine power into the Dark Spears, pointing all of them in one direction. Without warning, he fired all of them at Henry.

Swoosh!

The sphere of energy showed off its frightening power like a beast baring its sharp teeth, and it looked as if it could explode at any moment.

It flew at Henry with tremendous speed, threatening to blow him to pieces.

Henry took on the stance he had learned from Hector, the basic stance of swordsmanship. He then gripped his sword with both hands and took aim.

At the perfect timing, he swung his sword at the incoming mass of Dark Spears.

Whoosh!

Henry effortlessly sliced through the Dark Spears before his eyes, with no resistance against his blade whatsoever.

All the murderous spears were split in half and flew to Henry’s either side, vanishing into thin air as though they were sinking in water.

Henry smiled unwittingly as he saw Arthus’ Dark Spears disappear pitifully without even the slightest explosion.

Having made short work of the spears, Henry realized that his divine power had finally grown to match Arthus’.

‘You’re done for.’

The timing for everything was perfect, but Henry didn’t think of this as timing. Rather, he thought this was a miracle brought about by those who still believed in him and by his own faith in himself.

Swoosh!

Henry swung his sword in the air once more as thought to shake the blood off of it. Of course, since he had cut through a mass of energy, there was no blood on his blade, but he still made such a gesture to flaunt his power in front of Arthus.

And sure enough, Henry managed to get under his skin quite well.

“H-how…!”

Arthus had already been befuddled, and now he looked as though he had just dropped his food.

Snap!

Seeing the stunned look on Arthus’ face, Henry knew he had won. He snapped his fingers, causing his Magic Spears that covered the sky to disappear all at once.

With that, both of them could finally see the clear sky once again. The sun was still high up, its warm rays illuminating the battlefield.

Henry took in the warmth of the sun rays, feeling as though La was congratulating him for his victory.

On the other hand, Arthus stood frozen in place, akin to a statue. His expression was riddled with astonishment and panic.

Henry walked toward Arthus to get a closer look at his dumbfounded expression, and as he got right up to him, he opened his mouth to speak, but Arthus asked him a question before he managed to get the words out.

“H-how were you able to do that?!”

“Do what?”

“Divine power, of course! There’s no way you could’ve gained such divine power in an instant, so how did you…!”

“Ah, this?”

At Arthus’ question, Henry pushed aside what he had been about to say and unleashed a golden radiance.

Being slightly taller than Arthus, Henry looked down on him in his glorious brilliance and asked wryly, “Do you really want to know?”

“Tell me!”

Henry stalled, playing with his defeated adversary.

Arthus was completely livid, glaring at Henry with venomous eyes, but something like this no longer felt threatening to Henry.

“How cute. If you’re so curious, why don’t you ask that great Janus of yours that you serve?” proposed Henry.

“What?”

“Part of me wants to lock you up in a dark dungeon and torture you until you break, but… I’m afraid you’ve caused too much trouble everywhere.”

Henry unsheathed his sword again.

It was customary that those who committed awful crimes were not to be executed immediately. Instead, such criminals were usually locked up in underground prisons, and skilled torturers and healers were brought in to torture them until they begged with tears in their eyes to be killed.

Arthus was certainly the worst kind of criminal Eurasia had ever seen, and he certainly deserved being tortured for at least a hundred years. There was only one person in the world who could do that to him, and he stood right in front of him.

But as much as Henry would’ve loved to be Arthus’ torturer, he was the only one who could undo the destruction Arthus had caused.

Therefore, even though Henry strongly desired to give Arthus the agonizing death he deserved, he couldn’t afford to be greedy and give in to his hatred.

It felt cruel in a way—this monster had spread so much pain and suffering on this continent, tortured and massacred innocent men, women, even children, and yet he would be met with a swift, almost painless death.

It certainly didn’t feel like justice, but even so, Henry had no choice but to accept this ending.

Henry gritted his teeth, raised his sword, and said, “I’ve truly had enough… Let us never see each other again.”

‘...’

Henry thought he had made his peace with this outcome, but… There were still so many questions he wanted to ask, so many things he wanted to say to this man…

But still, Henry didn’t waver. He swallowed those words he still wanted to say to Arthus, burying them along with this long, accursed vendetta.

Henry took a deep breath, and with a bitter farewell, he swung his sword, drawing a diagonal line with his golden blade. The target was clear—Arthus’ damned pale neck.

Just as Henry’s blade was about to touch his neck, Arthus screamed in horror, “NOOO!”

In his final moments, Arthus squealed like a pig.

But just then, Henry’s sword, which he had swung with all his might, suddenly halted right before making contact with Arthus’ neck, as though someone had parried it.

Henry’s hand shook along with the sword. Despite having swung it downward, the blade refused to cut through Arthus’ neck as though an invisible force was forcefully pushing it away.

Henry frowned.

‘What the…!’

He was befuddled, having no idea why this was happening.

At that moment, black smoke emanated from Arthus.

“Damn it!”

As soon as he saw the smoke, Henry quickly jumped away from Arthus. He kept his sword pointed at him, watching him carefully in case he tried something.

“I-I’m… alive…?” muttered Arthus, his voice filled with both relief and disbelief as he saw the smoke rising from him.

And those were his last words.

Arthus, who had felt extreme terror from Henry’s blade to the point where tears had welled up in the corners of his eyes, suddenly drooped forward like an animal that had just taken an arrow to the head.

However, Arthus remained standing, and after a few moments, his sagged head suddenly snapped backward, the black smoke enveloping him entirely.

It was a strange sight, and Henry watched it carefully, his sword still pointed at Arthus. He had a bad feeling about this.

Henry felt like Arthus had died, seeing his limp body through the smoke. But just then, he suddenly remembered someone he had forgotten about.

“Janus!” Henry spat out almost involuntarily.

Whoosh!

As soon as Henry uttered the name of the god, the black smoke that had enveloped Arthus spread out in all directions as though a shockwave had dispersed it.

Whooshhhh!

A powerful gust of wind swept toward Henry, but he kept his head up, making sure not to miss anything.

The wind eventually died off, and Henry could now see the silhouette of a human, black as darkness itself, floating slightly above the ground.

Henry also felt the air around him suddenly become cold.

“Ha… You have to be kidding me…” Henry said to himself.

As soon as he said that, two red glowing dots slowly materialized on the face of the dark silhouette.